June Wilson, Executive Director of the Compton Foundation, is a celebrated philanthropic leader in the practices of racial justice and alternative approaches to legacy and perpetuity. She is guiding the 75-year-old philanthropic organization’s trajectory toward “Spend Up,” moving all its assets into leaders, organizations, and defined areas of interest through 2025. Under Wilson’s leadership, the foundation expanded its strategies to include work rooted in racial repair, complementing its support in climate resiliency, reproductive justice, democracy, and peacebuilding. She developed an initiative that expands the redistribution of resources beyond grantmaking and impact investing toward a model of racial repair rooted in relationality and intra-action.
Wilson brings extensive hands-on expertise to the Compton Foundation. As former executive director and trustee of the Quixote Foundation in Seattle, Washington, she guided its sunset in 2017. When Quixote chose limited life as an effective tool to leverage change in philanthropy, she implemented its “Spend Up” approach to affirm the fulfillment of purpose rather than focus on diminishing assets.
Wilson’s deep commitment to the interplay of philanthropic practice and community engagement is guided by her background as a cultural and community organizer in performing arts and neighborhood-based organizations. She also advises and consults executive leaders and family foundations in implementing and designing policies rooted in racial equity practices and frameworks that examine de-coloniality.
